1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a sample analyzer and computer program product, and specifically relates to a sample analyzer and computer program product for analyzing biological samples based on optical information.
2. Background
Analysis of biological samples such as blood and urine is used in the differentiation diagnosis and treatment of disease. Accordingly, blood analyzers which analyze blood using a flow cytometer have been developed for automatic high-speed analysis of many biological samples (refer to U.S. Patent Publication No. 4,735,504, and No. 6,525,807).
Many useful clinical laboratory test items for the differentiation and treatment of disease have been discovered in conjunction with medical advances in recent years. For example, the amount of hemoglobin contained in reticulocytes is used in the differentiation and treatment of anemia. The blood analyzers disclosed in the patent publications above are incapable of obtaining such information.
Non-patent literature has disclosed that parameters (RBC-Y and RET-Y) obtained from histograms of forward scattered light of erythrocytes and reticulocytes are respectively equivalent to the amount of hemoglobin contained in the erythrocytes and reticulocytes (for example, C. Briggs, R. Rogers, B. Tompson, S. J. Machin: New Red Cell Parameters on the Sysmex XE-2100 as Potential Markers of functional Iron Deficiency; Sysmex Journal International; Vol. 11 No. 2:63-68).
Although these parameters correlate with the amount of hemoglobin contained in erythrocytes and reticulocytes, the non-patent literature does not report an analyzer capable of obtaining the amount of hemoglobin contained in erythrocytes and reticulocytes based on these parameters and providing the analysis result to a user.